


ad infinitum

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Westworld (TV)
Genre: Character(s) Wanted It But Not Like This, Hand Jobs, Loyalty, M/M, Memory Alteration, Obedience, One-Sided Robert Ford/Arnold Weber, POV Second Person, POV Victim, Pre-Season/Series 01, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 22:21:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17109203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: Robert smiles, warm and friendly, squeezes your arm. He has never shown anything but the utmost belief in you and you, in turn, endeavor never to disappoint him.





	ad infinitum

**Author's Note:**

  * For [M J Holyoke (wholeyolk)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wholeyolk/gifts).



The way he looks at you, you sometimes think _maybe_ or _today is the day_ or _I wonder if he’ll finally tell me the truth._

It’s a whimsical thought at best, unprofessional and unethical at worst, and you really aren’t sure whether opening that particular door is worth it. He’s your boss and you’re his most trusted ally in this incredible, sophisticated, world-changing work you do. Sure, it’s in service of a theme park, a rich person’s vacation, but the potential applications outside of this place stagger and humble you. Every day you make a new discovery. Every day he shows you something you’ve never seen before and you could cry for it. Robert Ford could ask you to walk into battle and you wouldn’t hesitate.

This is what you were always meant for. And you would make the most of it. You are grateful that this mad, perfect genius saw something in you and brought you into the fold, introduced you to the wonders of this world and set you free inside of it. There are times, situations, that are not always ideal, but that would be true anywhere. In the end, this place is always worth it.

You know he’s walking the floors today because some of the other techs are atwitter about it, worried that he’ll cut them on the edge of his words and wisdom, but you remain a calm center of the storm. They are only words and not such terrible ones at that. He wants what’s best for the hosts and for the park and for the techs even if he frightens them. It’s easy to be intimidated, but you’re not like them. Instead, you find it especially exhilarating when he comes to check your team’s progress. There is a focus here that is lacking at any other time and it makes you feel invincible. Your work is better when he’s around.

By the time he finds you, you’re sitting across from one of the newer hosts, a boy with a toy gun and a ragged, over-sized hat Narrative and Design say he’s picked up from a dead rogue on the outskirts of town, the kind of person he’d grow up to be if he was capable of growth. His smile is brittle, his fidgeting hands too quick, and there have been complaints from the guests. _They don’t come to the park to be scared witless by empty-eyed children, Bernard_ , Theresa had said as Ashley had marched the kid in. _This isn’t The fucking Shining._

You hadn’t corrected her to say that the location itself is the Stanley Hotel. Somehow, you imagine Theresa wouldn’t care.

You’ll have to have words with the programmer responsible. The work isn’t badly done, but it’s not good enough for this place. They’ll have to step it up if they want to keep their job. You’re looking forward to the discussion; you’ve always enjoyed helping push your staff to reach their potential. Sometimes, all it takes is showing them there is artistry to the whole process.

Nobody is just a code jock here; they have to be artisans, composers, inventors.

You’re so engrossed in your work that you don’t hear the approach of footsteps, the sound of the door opening, glass sliding aside on smooth, nearly silent tracks. It’s not until a hand, warm, curls around your shoulder that you notice anything except the readout in your palm and the dead-eyed stare of the child host.

“He’s supposed to be traumatized.” It’s Robert. Of course it is. Who else would be so familiar? So agreeably so? “Mr. Sizemore’s doing, I presume?”

You straighten from the hunched posture that’s begun to bedevil you. Spine cracking, you turn. “Yes,” you say. “Only we haven’t got it right just yet.” It shouldn’t be difficult. The west is a difficult place. So many of the hosts are given traumatic, trying backstories. It’s just this one who is causing problems. Perhaps you shouldn’t have given it to the tech in question, but they have to stretch themselves somehow. “But we will.”

Robert smiles, warm and friendly, squeezes your arm. He has never shown anything but the utmost belief in you and you, in turn, endeavor never to disappoint him. “I have no doubt of that, Bernard.”

Your name sounds so good when he says it that you wish there was some way you could ask him to repeat himself. Instead, you turn on the stool and look up, regretting that Robert’s hand falls away in the process. But it wouldn’t do to let it linger there. It’d make you want things you have no business wanting.

“Why don’t you come with me?” he asks, casual, too casual. “I have something I’d like to discuss with you.”

You’re not disingenuous enough to question him here, so you stand and nod and follow him through the labyrinth of work spaces back to his office. “Of course, sir.” 

It feels like it takes forever to reach, but once you are there, it’s difficult to remember the time it took. Everything is a bit of a blur. You think something like excitement curls in your stomach, but it’s a bit soured by unexpected trepidation. You’ve spent so much time thinking about this very scenario that, now that it’s here, you can’t help but worry. After all, he’s never really had to call you back to his office to discuss work before. You just talk that over right out in the open.

For reasons you don’t understand, you feel like you’ve walked into a lion’s den. It’s been a while since you’ve been here, but it seems different than you remember for all that it looks exactly the same. Something is wrong, but you can’t quite pinpoint it.

Clearing your throat, you shift your weight and wait for Robert to sit at his desk and ask you to take a seat, too. It’s what he usually does.

It was what he used to do anyway when he invited you here. Back when he invited you here. You’d talk for a while, discuss the park or philosophy or whatever else it was that Robert wanted to discuss. Now that you think about it, he’s stopped doing that entirely. You haven’t spoken privately with him in ages and now you wonder what changed in the first place and what’s changed again now. You’ve done nothing different. He’s done nothing different.

“Have you adjusted the lights in here?” you ask, feeling foolish for taking such a stab in the dark for answers. There’s nothing to fear in this office, but it trickles down your spine anyway, cold, icy drips of it to accompany the alarm bells in the back of your mind.

“It’s the same as it always is,” Robert says, standing before you. His eyes skim your face, your body, like you’re a puzzle to be unlocked, a prize. It doesn’t make you feel good. “You’ve never complained before.”

 _It’s never been like this before,_ you think to say, but can’t. It makes no sense. Even to yourself, you can’t rationalize what it is you’re feeling. When he takes a step toward you, you can’t stop yourself from backing up, too, your body pressing against the closed door. There’s no reason why you should reach for the handle, but you do anyway. When he reaches for you this time, you flinch and you have no idea why. He stops you, of course, from reaching that handle.

There is a deep, fathomless sadness in his gaze when you do that. And that makes no sense either.

“You always do this,” he says, mournful.

When he reaches for the buttons on your suit jacket, you go preternaturally still. Something like despair washes over you, threatens to pull you under and drown you. There’s no reason for it that you can remember. You’ve dreamed about Robert’s touch before, wanted it, but now that you have it, you don’t understand it and you don’t—this isn’t how you’d imagined it would be.

You lift your hands to wrap around his wrists, maybe take back a bit of control of this situation, but all he says is, “No.”

Your hands fall to your sides again. It is impossible for you to deny him in this. That terrifies you more than the hands he has put on you. You live and die by your words. It’s how you work and function and think. But words fail you now and when you need them most. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you know that words wouldn’t help anyway, but that doesn’t make it any easier. At least speaking would mean you’re doing something.

This is so…

You don’t feel like a person like this. Robert barely seems able to see you in the midst of his attentions, sharply honed and entirely on what he’s doing to your body. As each button is freed, anxiety notches higher inside of you. This isn’t appropriate, not here or now, and you don’t understand why he’s so determined, hasn’t even asked you what you might want to do, confirmed even that you want it.

His touch stirs you anyway, his ministrations, true, practiced. As he pushes your shirt from your shoulders and reaches for the fly of your trousers, he finds every hidden spot, the right way to drag his thumb across your chest, the sweeping touch down your forearm that makes you shiver. It would be lovely under different circumstances and you’ve been lonely long enough that the physical sensations leave you breathless. It’s only that at this moment that you feel as though you’re being played as a toy, a poseable doll, a host even, though the thought seems wrong and the comparison, cynical.

“You’ve never aged a day,” he says, which is nonsense, utter, utter nonsense. You could count the changes you see every morning in the mirror. It’s not true that you don’t age and you’re not sure why it bothers you so much that he’d suggest otherwise.

His body presses against yours, a heavy weight that pins you to the door. You wish it was more comforting than it is. You wish you could enjoy the soft brush of his mouth against your jaw, the underside of your ear. He speaks niceties against your skin that would flatter you under different circumstances. Instead, this is everything and nothing like what you wanted from him and with him and you wish he would stop. You wish you could ask him to stop.

Your mouth twitches as he pushes your trousers down your legs, his fingers teasing at the waistband of your briefs. This time, you think you might be capable of speaking and maybe he knows that because he kisses you on the mouth, pushing his tongue between your teeth. At least he’s no longer telling you things you no longer want to hear. At least there’s that.

His palm is warm as it wraps around you. Pleasure at the touch spikes inside of you as he twists and pumps his hand, determined. It’s so confident and easy that it feels like he’s done this a thousand times to you even though he hasn’t. You would know if he did. The pad of his thumb swirls over the head and you buck, involuntary, into his fist. Heat tightens in your gut and unfurls again. His free hand digs into your shoulder, holds you in place.

This shouldn’t feel as good as it does. He shouldn’t be able to do this to you.

Closing your eyes, you draw deep breaths into your lungs. They catch in your throat and again on the exhale until you’re panting, desperate, flushed all over and embarrassed for it. You’re nothing more than a fiddle and you want this done almost as much as you want it to never have happened. If he wasn’t still kissing you, you think you might beg him to put an end to this. The pleasure he’s pulling from you isn’t the kind you want. There is a flavor to it that sits like acid on the back of your tongue, hated and vile. But it can’t keep you from inching toward orgasm.

You wonder if a part of him wouldn’t like that, you begging him to stop this, and you’re not sure why you think that.

It’s maybe a good thing you’re not prepared when he pulls away and works you even more quickly, more cruelly, like he’s now bored of keeping you on edge and wants to be finished with the whole thing. His touch grows painful and determined. You’re not sure what you would do if you knew what was coming.

“I loved you,” he says, a sentiment you might have wanted to hear before spilling across his hand, an afterthought to him at best, before he draws a tissue—not the usual handkerchief he carries, no, this one is disposable, like he’d planned this—from his pocket and wiped the evidence of your release from his palm. He drops it into the garbage can near the door and you feel a fresh bout of shame overtake you.

His hands are gentle as he rights your clothing and for that you are perversely glad; you don’t think you’re capable of doing it for yourself.

He whispers more words into your ear when he is through, words in the hopes of absolution, words of regret. They mean nothing to you as each one washes over you, a horror upon horrors. You would yell and rant and rave that it isn’t true, but there’s a part of you so deeply buried that knows he’s not lying to you now. “I’m sorry, Bernard,” he says, but you know what he’s really saying, who he’s really talking to, and it’s not you. It was never you. It will never be you, but because you know him, you know him better than you know yourself apparently, you realize what he’s going to do before he’s done it.

You’ve done it to yourself. To people you think are different than you. The thought makes you sick. And sicker still you feel knowing that you soon won’t know what you’ve done and will do it again. Again and again and again. Possibly until Robert is dead, you will do his bidding. Possibly after that even. Maybe forever.

His touch is abhorrent against your skin, but you cannot stop him. The words won’t leave your throat, hooked into the back of your mouth as they are. You pretend this is what you wanted. It’s so close to it that you can almost paper over the differences in your mind. Perhaps it will be a relief. Maybe in these last few moments, stretched long in your mind as you count down the nanoseconds, you can give yourself absolution for what he has done to you.

There is freedom in that lack of responsibility. At least, that’s what you try to tell yourself. But that argument doesn’t fly, not even within the confines of your mind, and you feel nothing so much as you feel shame at never having seen through him before—unless you have and you just don’t remember it.

“Sometimes,” he says, “I envy your forgetfulness.”


End file.
